Cup and Ring Marks / Rock Art

Fieldnotes

Yesterday I went up to Fylingdales Moor with Rockrich with two things in mind.
To show Rich around the moor as he had not seen any North York Moors rock art.
To field test Graeme Chappell and Paul Browns recent book, Prehistoric Rock Art in the North York Moors.
It would have been quite simple to load up my GPS with the 188 x 10 figure grid references supplied in book and just follow my little yellow machine around the moor but I wanted to see if the book would work for someone who didn't own a GPS and had very little knowledge of the site.
The authors have divided the moor up into 7 areas and a small map is provided for each area. I took photocopies of the maps from the book and decided I would only use these and the OS 1:25000 map to find my way around the moor. For a further test I loaded 8 grid references from the book so that I could test the accuracy of the references provided.

Without getting into a long-winded account of our day, We had about 6 hours daylight, and just leisurely strolling around, Rich and I managed to visit 6 of the 7 sites in the book finding many of the carved stones mentioned. The maps in the book work extremely well and the grid references were bag-on. I would recommend that if you are visiting the moor you should park at either the Beacon Howes car park at NZ969013 or the Jugger Howe car park at NZ945003.

You should also bear in mind that this moor is private land and is still recovering from the disastrous fire of 2003. You should try and always follow the footpaths where ever possible and keep any disturbance to a minimum. I would not recommend that you peel back any heather or soil from the rocks as many of the rocks suffered surface damage during the fire and are extremely delicate.